The U.S. National Hurricane Center said early Saturday that Hurricane Isaias is getting “a little stronger” as it drenches the Bahamas and makes its way toward the U.S. mainland.Isaias is moving northwest with maximum sustained winds at 135 kph, according to meteorologists.Isaias, located about 185 kilometers south southeast of Nassau, is expected to make landfall on Florida’s southeastern coast late Saturday or Sunday.The southern U.S. states of Florida and North Carolina have declared hurricane warnings.Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has declared a state of emergency for a dozen counties on the Atlantic Coast. Heavy rains from the storm are expected to begin in Florida on Saturday and arrive over the Carolinas by early next week.In North Carolina, Gov. Roy Cooper also declared emergencies in coastal counties and ordered the evacuation of Oracoke Island, which was hit by last year’s Hurricane Dorian.The hurricane has prompted authorities in parts of Florida to close coronavirus testing sites at a time when cases have been growing in the state.Officials in Miami-Dade County said they do not believe it will be necessary to open evacuation centers for this storm but said 20 centers remain on standby in case conditions change.In the Bahamas, officials evacuated people in Abaco and in the eastern end of Grand Bahama who have been living in temporary structures since Hurricane Dorian.Earlier, while still a tropical storm, Isaias lashed Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, causing power outages and small landslides.A man died in the Dominican Republic when he was electrocuted by a fallen electrical cable, according to the Associated Press.U.S. President Donald Trump has signed an emergency declaration for Puerto Rico, which has yet to fully recover from 2017’s Hurricane Maria and a recent series of earthquakes.Isaias is the ninth named storm of a busy Atlantic hurricane season. This is the earliest date a storm beginning with the letter “I” has formed.   
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The U.S. Gross Domestic Product contracted 9.5% in the second quarter, the worst drop ever recorded according to data published by the Department of Commerce. The massive fall in economic output comes as the country experiences a surge in coronavirus cases that has forced many states to tap the brakes on reopening plans in an effort to again slow the spread of the disease. VOA correspondent Mariama Diallo reports.
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President Donald Trump says he intends to ban the operation of TikTok in the U.S.Trump said Friday he could take action as soon as Saturday to stop the operation of the popular video-sharing social media app in the U.S.“As far as TikTok is concerned, we’re banning them from the United States,” he told reporters traveling with him Friday from Florida.He said he would likely use an executive order to prohibit the app.Trump does not support a deal that would allow a U.S. company to buy TikTok’s American operations.The app is extremely popular in both the U.S. and around the world. It has already been downloaded 2 billion times worldwide, and 165 million of those downloads were in the U.S.The app features not only entertainment videos, but also debates and takes positions on political issues, such as racial justice and the coming U.S. presidential election.U.S. officials are concerned that TikTok may pose a security threat, fearing that the company might share its user data with China’s government. However, TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, has said it does not share user data with the Chinese government and maintains that it only stores U.S. user data in the U.S. and Singapore. TikTok also recently chose former Disney executive Kevin Mayer as its chief executive in a move seen as an effort to distance itself from Beijing.Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said earlier this week that the U.S. government’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, an interagency group led by the Treasury Department, would be looking into TikTok.CFIUS’s job is to oversee foreign investments and assess them for potential national security risks. It can force companies to cancel deals or institute other measures it deems necessary for national security.  
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China recently issued new draft rules aimed at toughening oversight of foreign teachers in the country, requiring them to undergo ideological training sessions and creating a new social credit rating system to monitor their conduct.Arrests and deportations of foreign teachers in China have soared since 2018 amid a broad crackdown on teachers without proper work visas and Beijing’s push for a more patriotic education system.Analysts told VOA this is partly due to the deterioration of U.S.-China relations and China’s relations with other English-speaking countries. Yet parents say they are still interested in having their children learn English.Draft regulationThe FILE – A Chinese teacher writes English words on a blackboard at a class in Shanghai, April 26, 2002.What about learning English?English teaching has a huge market in China. The China Science News reported that more than 300 million people in China are learning English. English classes, mandated by the Ministry of Education, cost nearly 164 billion RMB (about $24 billion) annually.Yet as China’s relationship with the U.S. and other major English-speaking countries worsens, some worry the situation will mirror what happened in the 1960s, when passion to learn Russian sharply decreased after ties between Beijing and Moscow deteriorated.Commentator Qin Weiping said there’s a possibility that English might be less important if China keeps its aggressive foreign policy and is further isolated by the U.S. and other major economies down the road.Professor Zhan Jiang disagreed, saying that the current situation was temporary.“Some kids can’t go abroad, and some international students can’t come back. There are lot of reasons — COVID-19, Sino-U.S. relations. But I think most Chinese students will still learn English as their second language. That trend won’t change,” he told VOA.Li Ping, parent of a Beijing student, told VOA that he still wanted his child to learn English well, so he has the opportunity to go to the U.S. for further education. He added that he thought China’s current foreign policy and international environment would change one day. “We must invest in education,” he said.
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